Recently I ask my grandmother to send me some old pictures of herself and our family, as my girlfriend and I started decorated the apartment. This is one of those photos. She was 14, a freshman in high school and apparently on Belle Isle in Michigan. She looks beautiful. Also, she said at that time, 1949, she made her own clothes, which is pretty neat.

I love her attitude! I, too, wish I had could have had that kind of confidence at 14. It makes me happy to see Belle Isle represented here! It's a beautiful place – definitely one of Detroit's gems. This picture was taken during Detroit's heyday, and it's amazing to think about what it must have been like back then. Detroit is still an amazing city, but it has changed, and parts of Belle Isle feel forgotten.

Hi Scott,I think you are going a bit too much "vintage" lately. I do not only refer to this pic, I refer to a lot of your latest posts… "old"-looking interiors…ugh.Its horrible. This affection for a fake-looking past. American Sentimentalism.Get over it! Please!

firstly this looks like the girl from Alice In Wonderland, small frame and a beautiful porcelain face. I also wonder whether she hand stitched her clothing, or had a large old fashioned mechanical sewing machine. i love sewing, however if i had grasped it at 14 i would be proud, and probably out taking inspiring photos of people wearing my stuff like this lovely picture, its hard to be motivated when in year 12…too many things to do.

Love that this awesome shot of a girl who clearly had quite a bit of style was taken in Detroit. Being a teenager from Detroit I love shots like these, taken when the city was in its heyday. I love my city and hope that images like this one can offer a little help in changing the reputation it has gained in recent years.

Aside from all of that, your grandmother is fabulous, I love the expression on her face!

I think that we also forget that many people in the earlier part of the 20th century, and earlier, of course, made their own clothes. People, mostly women, had more developed "home-ec" skills. Many had very developed skills which are often lost in our disposable culture or becomes expensive college curriculum and not part of the quotidian experience, handed down from parents and grandparents.I miss looking at vintage/junk stores when you could actually find clothing that was "handmade"(which is such a cheeky term these days since most things were DIY for the majority). We've got short sight too, not just in thinking we've "invented" cool but also in more universal daily creativity, i.e. cooking, sewing, gardening, puttering in the garage/over the workbench. Our mothers though, might consider this a bad fit of nostalgia.

in the past 100 years the sexiest women have been from the 1940s..hair style, dress, and I also have a foto of my mother in a dress…she is drop dead gorgeous and it's taken on Belle Isle too @1949 (she's with my dad, who is super cool w his bowtie!)

Beautiful photo, I really love it ( the signature – awesome!). My grandmas and greatgrandmas also made their clothes themselves, but when they were older. It was more because of that there wasn't much in the shops during comunism (I'm from Eastern Europe) but still, it's important to be creative.

Rosie is a gorgeous girl and this is a luscious photo. Is this Sart's grandmother or the grandmother of who won the contest…? Sorry I don't log in everyday. I love seeing pictures of older people when they were young, it helps puts things in place for me. Rosie had a good photographer too.

Yup that is me,61 years ago, it was taken with a very cheap camera and I cannot remember how the shot was taken, I think I was in the boat and somebody was in the water . It was a great time and yes I am proud of Mike Correy for thinking of his Grandmother, Thanks Mike and Carrie

Far the best picture,of the bunch , It is of my oppion… That she looks just as beautyfull @ 75yr.s old as@14 yr.s old,,,Just a wouderfull humin being! (I KNOW SHE IS WITH ME 24/7) :-),AS I HAVE A TATOO OF HER ON MY ARM…Best of luck…..you'll Allways be #1 with me ! ! ! I LOVE YOU :-)

I love this! My grandmother also has some amazing pictures taken on Belle Isle. What's really a shame is how the island has deteriorated in recent years ( with no thanks to Kwame Kilpatrick who chose to put the available funds into preserving and old baseball stadium instead of what was the oldest still running aquarium in the nation ). In any case, Belle Isle is still a beautiful place with a lot of history for not only the inhabitants of Detroit, but people all over the country.